Wow, just... wow! My students and I are nearing the end of the first lesson in our travel unit and I have been instructing using primarily authentic resources. This made me really nervous at first, but things seem to be going the way I hope. Of course as with any lesson I can see the flaws, gaps and missteps I need to avoid in future iteration of this lesson, but overall I am pleased.

One of the elements that made this lesson so different from how I usually teach is the focus question. A bit different from the essential question that might drive a unit, this question was quantitative. It has one answer or at least a series of answers, and the goal I set for my students is to be able to answer that question in the target language with some authority by the end of the instructional day or "chunk."

What's the big difference in that? Well, mainly that I don't answer it for them. I ask the question or even guide them to the point in which they ask the question, I hand them the materials and the "to do" list and I get out of the way. I don't present a lesson on hostels or explain to them how to get through an international airport without problems. I ask the question and then let them figure out how to answer the question. Is this a mini-version of PBL? I don't know. Maybe it is. All I know is that they are working hard (well most of them are) and at some point they know I am going to be coming around to ask them the question for real, and I will expect they can answer it. The most I am doing is stealing instructional methods from the workshops my boss puts on for us.

The question we are working on now is "What do I do in an international airport?" and it is a part of a larger unit called Taking a Trip. The culminating goal for our students in this curriculum unit is to be able to explain a travel problem they had and how they solved it, so this knowledge is essential to all students even if their personal experience with international travel is limited. I don't want any student to feel isolated from this learning because he or she has never flown in an airplane before, much less on an international flight. Maybe, just maybe this lesson will teach them more than just the Spanish I want them to know. Maybe that student who has never flown will have an idea how to help his family navigate through the airport because he took part in this lesson. A teacher can hope, right?

What this question has done for my students and I is given a reference point to come back to no matter what their questions are. For example, when a student asks me, "How much of this graphic organizer do I have to complete?" I can say, "Can you answer the question completely? Are there any steps I won't know from your answer?" And what about every teacher's favorite question, "Is this a grade?" No one has asked me that question because the answer is, "Well, yes." The grade just doesn't happen to be on the paper itself.

Do I have students who are off task? YES. It's mid-April. Of course I do, but what I do is head to that group and start peppering them with questions in the target language. I want to get to a point that they can't answer because when I do that we all know that the work isn't done yet. They can't reach the goal because they can't answer the question, so they have to refocus their energy. I guess they could choose not to, but I haven't really seen any just flat quit. I do have to monitor and continually walk around the room, look at their work and stop to test the waters, especially in my non-honors classes, but that is just reality.

Today, I watched a group of young ladies in my 6th period honors class complete the required reading for the lesson, finalize their notes, and then take control of the situation. For the next 15 or 20 minutes these ladies just sat and asked each other questions in Spanish about what happens first, second an last in the airport. They asked questions about who they should speak to regarding seat changes or what documents they would need for certain parts of the airport. They asked the questions and answered them, too. I bragged on them to some of their classmates, and some of those other students came over to watch them go! I didn't have to ask them to, I didn't prepare a prompt or even give them practice questions. THEY DID IT ALL. What was amazing is that they were working harder than me, and even more awesome is the fact that they knew it and were so proud of themselves! I have to say, it was quite impressive.

Tomorrow I will visit each group with a rubric and ask them questions about what I need to do in the airport at different intervals. I will assess their ability to answer and be understood as well as their ability to use the vocabulary they've learned to answer the main question, "What do I do in an international airport?"

No worries at all. They've got this.

Maybe the truth is that sometimes we teachers do too much and over-complicate our lessons. Maybe every lesson boils down to one question. Maybe we just never let our students be the one to answer it.

"these ladies just sat and asked each other questions in Spanish about what happens first, second an last in the airport."

THIS is MAGIC!

Also, thank you so much for including the less-than-magical group in your description, how that's working, and what to do. It helps to A) know I'm not alone and B) stay on the problem-solving track even then.

I'd love to know how this fits in the larger unit! What's the ultimate goal? Will they be creating something awesome to present?

At this point, what you have going is Problem-Based Learning--an amazing tool for just such experiences as you have going on! Were you to have students present findings to a relevant authentic audience, BAM! Project-Based Learning!

Thanks for this post and the wonder of reflection! Questions are powerful, especially when we don’t answer them for the students, but guide them to finding their own answers. Love it!

You asked if this were PBL, or as we language people are now calling it, PBLL for Project-based Language Learning. As one who has studied PBLL up front and deeply, as it were, I would have to say it is, and it isn’t. Love those qualified answers, right?

Anyway, it is PBLL in that you are using a question to drive and guide students to inquiry. They need to know some things in order to find the answer(s) to the question(s) of the unit. That in itself is powerful, just as you said in your reflection.

It isn't, however, fully aligned PBLL, however, because PBLL must have more than just a driving question, inquiry, the teacher as guide, etc. To be PBLL, there would have to be a few more things. Students would collaborate in teams if 4, ideally, to create a real-world product (as evidence of their learning), for a real-world audience, using authentic multimedia documents for their inquiry. Students would be free to choose the product, and their voice would be evident in the final outcome. There are more details, but what I would hasten to add, is that though this one example is not fully-aligned PBLL per se, nevertheless, it is a great step toward it, and I know you do more PBLL-like work with your students than you address in this one example. In fact, I can well imagine that you have had many near-PBLL hits than you might think!

Not that we all must do PBLL only units all year long. In fact, I don’t even think everyone has to do PBLL only. Even though I found it was my thing, because my students loved the PBLL-aligned units most of all, I did not limit myself to any one particular method. I simply sought to model the target language almost all the time, and celebrated everything students did in the target language.

I love PBLL, but more importantly, I love kids. And so do you! Isn't that the biggest lesson of all? I propose that, we teachers, take on our own inquiry-based approach to language teaching and learning. Here is our question — How can we, as language teachers, celebrate student achievement toward target language proficiency and intercultural competency better than ever before?

I would wager that as we lose the hammers we have used, to trade them in for tools for celebration, we will find many more of our students continuing to take the courses we offer for longer periods of time, and we will never again hear from people that they took ___(L2) in school, and can’t remember anything. Rather, we will hear about their adventures abroad and about how they remembered how to say X and how that changed their whole way of thinking about the world!